Children Abandoned and Taken Back

Abstract

Abandoning a child was no rare deed in European towns in the nineteenth century, mostly among single women in underprivileged environments. On the other hand, taking this same child back was more unusual. By analyzing the registers of the Lyon hospitals, it is possible to determine the percentage of children taken back by their mothers, how this was actually achieved, and to examine the family status of the mothers at the time of both events. Both of these acts—abandoning a child and then taking it back—can be put back in their context in these women’s lives, for instance, by looking into the length of time separating the two procedures. To finish with, it appears that the Hospices civils de Lyon encouraged mothers to take their children back and generally had a conciliatory attitude toward them, supposedly in the children’s interest.